I recently stumbled upon the article again and it reminded me of an article I've been meaning to write for my entrepreneurial friends. We've all heard the horror stories (fairly or unfairly) of how Venture Capitalists have screwed over the founders of companies.

What we rarely hear about is the enormous value that some in the Venture Capital community create when investing in a startup. Whether it's strategic help, introductions to customers, joint ventures with other portfolio companies, and just plain fair dealings. I want to help narrow your choices by providing a starting point.

How was the list determined?

I created the VC guide using state of the art sentiment analysis technology from Lithium (formerly Scout labs), confidential reviews from entrepreneurs on TheFunded.com, and four surveys that I issued across four different social platforms. I also looked for mentions of individual VC's on Quora to gain additional insight.

The result is the top 30. If your company is fortunate enough to be working with any of these people then you're working with a fair and devoted individual. Using Lithium's sentiment analysis tools, attributes like helpful, fair, brilliant, profitable, amazing, and knowledgeable are consistent attributes for this group.

It's important to note that this is not an influence or popularity list. The list was created to identify the people in the Venture Capital community that people respect most. Of course this is not the definitive list but in my research this group came out on top.

Socialytics or social analytics is the emerging practice of analyzing social media data in order to help with a strategic goal. If you don't like the term, please don't take it out on me.

I used a weighted average ranking system to determine the list. So even though Dave McClure and Marc Andreessen were not rated on The Funded, they ranked high enough in the other categories to make the list. Based on what I uncovered in my research, they deserve their spots.

Final Thoughts…

It's interesting to note how many early stage investors made the list. Are they generally more helpful? Do they need to be in order to get their newly funded businesses off the ground? What is First Round Capital doing differently to have such a large share of the top 48 (see below)?